Can Massive Religious Festivals Celebrations Encourage a Faster Spread of a Pandemic? The Case of COVID-19 in Israel

Abstract

This paper attempts to evaluate how massive religious festivities celebrations can encourage the faster spread of any pandemic, such as the case of COVID-19. For example, we evaluate Israel's three major religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and the Islam festivities celebrations. Firstly, we have the traditional Jewish festivities celebrations followed by Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Rosh Hashanah. In the Christian's traditional festivities celebrations, we identified Christmas, Easter Day, and All Saints Day. Finally, the Muslim festivities celebrations present the Muharram and the Birthday of Holy Prophet Mohamad. Hence, we want to evaluate if these nine massive religious festivities celebrations are the main reasons for the large spread of COVID-19 in Israel directly or indirectly. In fact, we propose a new indicator to evaluate the impact of any massive religious festivities celebrations in the fast spread of any pandemic everywhere and anytime. The new indicator is entitled “The National Spread Levels of Infectious Diseases Risk from Massive Religious Festivities Index (National-SLIDRMRF-Index)." This research paper's main objective is to generate an alternative standardized index to monitoring and control the expansion of any pandemic such as COVID-19 among different religious groups in the same country urgently.